


The Court of Conscience

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Capital Punishment, Character Study, Ethical Dilemmas, Ethics, Gen, Golden Age (Narnia), Justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 21:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16071533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: With Peter and Edmund away at the wars, Susan is left to preside over Narnian justice. It's a responsibility she takes very seriously, and would give anything not to have on her shoulders.





	The Court of Conscience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snitchnipped](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snitchnipped/gifts).



> 1\. This story is book!verse rather than movie!verse, and as such includes a Susan who is not a warrior and who earned her title of "Gentle" through personality and behavior rather than have it incongruously bestowed upon her at her coronation.
> 
> 2\. Fair warning: while nobody dies on-page, this story is basically about Susan grappling with the aftermath of a murder, and also with the residual trauma of Jadis's reign.

It was well known in Cair Paravel that when Queen Susan was unsettled, the best places to find her were on the parapets above the sea, or in the archery range by the southwest curtain wall, trying to fill her mind with nothing but the white roar of waves against the cliffs or the empty silence of perfect aim.

Today she chose the range. Contemplating the sea's vast indifference had brought her no closer to a conclusion over the past two days since Feverfew's confession and hearing. Perhaps archery, with its more human scale and its more immediate reminder of how easy and horrifying it was to cause another's death, might prove more clarifying.

"We could simply delay the sentencing until Peter and Edmund return from the north," Lucy said as she trailed Susan through the castle grounds. "Justice is Edmund's bailiwick and Peter _is_ the High King. It would be perfectly justifiable to defer to their opinions."

"It would not," Susan said. "Authority comes with duties as well as privileges, and we are queens in Narnia just as much as they are kings. Besides, you know how close tempers are to boiling in the port. If I delay judgment any longer, that will turn the chance of riots into a certainty."

Lucy sighed. "I know. But I hate seeing you so twisted up around yourself." She paused, then suggested yet again, "I could issue judgment for you..."

"No."

"You don't need to shelter me," Lucy insisted. "We're both Queens. This is as much my duty as yours."

"You're a Queen of Narnia," Susan agreed. "You're also twelve." She stopped at the end of the archery range, opened the door to the equipment shed, and lifted a longbow from a rack. It wasn't her Gift, but sometimes she preferred a bow that didn't seem to fit in her hands like an extension of her own body. Finding the calm of perfect aim felt more meaningful if she had to work for it, adjust herself to imperfect tools as well as the changeable nature of the air.

When she turned back to her sister, Lucy was very clearly biting her tongue on her standard response to anyone telling her she was too young or innocent to do as she wished. Susan dredged up a small but heartfelt smile and laid her free hand on Lucy's shoulder, reaching more across than down these days.

"This is my judgment to make. But you can help. Please go to Feverfew in the cellars and try one final time to make her repent. If she feels remorse, that gives me options, and everyone should receive as many chances to change as possible."

Lucy held herself very still for a moment, then lunged forward to wrap her arms around Susan in a bruising hug. "I will. And remember, I'll be here for you after court, whatever happens."

"Thank you," Susan whispered into her sister's golden hair, before gently dislodging Lucy's arms and stepping toward the rails at the west end of the archery range.

"I'll see that you're not disturbed," Lucy promised, and hurried out of sight, leaving Susan, to all eyes, completely alone. Even the nearby training grounds were empty, their usual inhabitants either gone north with Peter and Edmund to push back the giants' latest incursion, or scattered in small groups throughout Port Paravel in case tensions in the harbor town flooded free like scalding tea from a shattered kettle.

Susan made herself count a dozen arrows and check the fletching on each as she set them on the rails at the west end of the range. She checked her bowstring for any signs of fraying, then pressed the bow until it bent enough to let her slip the string over the notch at the end of the upper arm. She tested the draw weight dry, once, twice, and again. She checked the lacing on her cuffs and braces, to ensure her sleeves would not catch against the string.

The usual peace of routine evaded her. Her mind continued to race.

What had possessed Feverfew? What had made the Hind trample Selene the Badger to death four days past? Feverfew had given her reasons in open court, but Susan still couldn't leap the gap from facts to the raw, choking emotions she imagined must have driven the murder. She was even less able to imagine a mindset that would carry out such an act in cold, planned logic, for all that Feverfew seemed to waver between overwrought passion and seeming rationality.

It was difficult enough to reconcile that her own brothers were killers -- had killed, were killing now as they fought giants on the northern border, would kill again. Even Lucy wished to ride to war one day, to take lives as well as to save them.

Susan knocked the first arrow, breathed, released. One whisker left of the center ring. She knocked the second, breathed, released. True. She drove the next four in a tight cross shape around the true strike rather than try for another perfect shot; there was no sense wasting arrows.

Death was always a waste, all that a person was or could be cut short. Death destroyed all chance at growth, forgiveness, redemption. Whatever glory might await in Aslan's Country, it couldn't be worth the loss of goodness and happiness here.

Why couldn't Feverfew understand that?

Yes, Selene had given information to the Witch's secret police during the Winter. She had admitted that, had freely confessed when Feverfew had accused her last spring. "Yes, I betrayed our country and our people," she'd said. "I regret it. I was cold, and hungry, and afraid. I wanted to keep myself and my family alive. Other people are dead because of what I did, and it didn't even keep my own family safe. But I'm not the only one. If you condemn me, you condemn half of Narnia. We're all collaborators and traitors. And if Aslan forgave King Edmund, I think he forgives the rest of us, too."

Susan had thought about Master Tumnus, and the Beavers, and agreed. So had Edmund, and Peter, and so she hadn't needed to speak in judgment then.

With them gone, she was the voice of the thrones. Lucy was doing her best to shoulder the burdens of royal authority, but Susan refused to let her sister bear the burden of this choice.

She was a Queen of Narnia. If she failed to uphold the law, their whole country's honor would ring hollow.

The next target was more than a circle with painted rings. This one was shaped like a man, with red blotches painted over the areas where a strike would cripple or kill.

Susan hated targets like these.

She knocked an arrow. She aimed for the target's heart, breathed, stilled the tremor in her hand, focused until all she saw was red and the faintest whisper of wind as it whisked through the dust and grass of the range.

The arrow struck true, dead center. A killing blow.

Susan had seen Selene's cracked and mangled body when the port guards carried it to the Cair and begged Lucy to try her cordial, a last hope against hope. She was no stranger to death, much though she might wish otherwise -- their arrival in Narnia had sparked a war, after all, and she had walked through the aftermath the great battle. She had shot and killed dumb animals for the Cair's table, or for travel rations when she went on progress through the kingdom. But somehow Selene's body had been worse, because she had been struck down in the heart of Narnia rather than in battle, killed by a fellow Narnian rather than an enemy.

And Feverfew was not repentant.

"Selene was a traitor and a murderer by proxy," she'd said at the hearing. "Her words led the Witch's police to my family. My parents, my siblings, my aunt and uncles and cousins, are all dead because of her. Yet she went unpunished! And you asked me to live alongside her! How can we call ourselves Aslan's people if we let those who served his enemy, his murderer, walk free among us? We must have _justice_."

Susan knocked another arrow, turned to the next target. She shot the painted Faun in the heart. Drew, breathed, loosed, again and again: painted Dwarfs and Leopards and Ravens and Hares fell before her, pierced through.

Narnia had no prisons, the very word still tainted with the horrors of Jadis's dungeons. Narnian law dating back to King Frank and Queen Helen prescribed death for unrepentant murderers. Feverfew had no regrets beyond getting caught. Dangerous numbers of people thought she might have a point, enough to resurrect old resentments and bitter feuds Susan and her family had tried to lance and bury at the start of their reign, when they signaled through their choice of friends and councilors that they offered a fresh start to those who had bent and broken under the Witch's reign.

Was prison even kinder than death? To lock a Deer away from the forests and fields was hideous cruelty. To lock _anyone_ in a tiny room was horrible, and put a constant moral weight on the ones who held the keys.

And yet, a prison had a door. Doors could be opened. Prisoners could walk free.

The dead could never live again. And to take a life was also a moral weight fit to bend the neck of the strongest soul.

Susan set down her bow and walked the length of the range. Dry late summer grass swished and parted around her ankles, and the dust of too many days without rain rose in a low haze to mark her path. She pulled the arrows from the targets one by one, checking each point and each feather as she dropped them into her quiver.

Selene was dead. She had not deserved to die.

Feverfew likewise did not deserve to die. Nobody deserved death. But Susan couldn't simply let the Hind walk free, still convinced of her righteousness, and hope she would change her ways. She had done a terrible thing and actions must have consequences. Those consequences must be imposed by the thrones, must be _reliable_ , or Narnia would fall into chaos.

Aslan had died in Edmund's place, invoked the Deeper Magic to break the Witch's trap. Susan had no such power. All she had was the law and her own willingness to bear the consequences of her choices.

Back at the railings, Susan raised her bow, knocked an arrow, breathed, released.

Then she turned and left the range without looking back.

She had a sentence to pronounce.

**Author's Note:**

> Some additional thoughts about writing this story are available [here on Dreamwidth](https://edenfalling.dreamwidth.org/1479482.html). :)


End file.
